War Memorial Hospital strategic plan features community input

War Memorial Hospital held its 3-year strategic plan retreat Tuesday night at the Lake Superior State University’s Cisler Center where community members could give their input.

“Earlier in the summer we sent out a Community Needs Assessment,” said David Jahn, CEO at War Memorial Hospital. “Some of that is in our strategic plan information.”

He said town hall meetings also were conducted to gather more input in helping to develop its plan.

The hospital has set up its goals into five pillars: quality, service, people, growth and finance.

“The next three years are going to be the most fluid of any three years the organization has ever had,” Jahn said because of the Affordable Care Act. “We don’t know how it is going to affect hospitals and physicians.”

Community members broke up into groups and hospital staff representing the five pillars rotated through and made presentations.

Under growth, Director of Communications Patrick Bray said the current state for War Memorial Hospital was pretty good.

“When we look at our market share, the numbers are very good,” he said. “The problem you are seeing is the building is somewhat old in certain areas.”

Bray said the hospital is in a state of flux with all the changes in healthcare, but there is one area where potential is seen.

“One of the big things in growth that is a potential now is a state law changed it is possible for War Memorial Hospital to get a radiation therapy machine. The problem is that it is a very expensive thing to do,” he said. “A machine alone is about $4.5 million.”

In the quality category, Emily Bochniak, accreditation manager, said the hospital wants to use transparent data to drive improvement.

Carmine Mazzuca, director of performance improvement agreed.

“We are improving our documentation,” she said. “Even though some percentages are low, it is because we are not documenting well. We are doing the right things for our patients.”

As in any operation, finances are key for the hospital.

“The market of healthcare is very volatile. There are a lot of hurdles. Some of the significant ones are reimbursements … technology … cost of operations,” said Chief Financial Officer Kevin Kalchik. “Access to capital will be difficult in the future. … We are very important to the region, but we need to be good stewards. We need to provide the highest quality care with the highest customer satisfaction.”

The hospital also has seen growth in the number of employees.

“Our FTEs (full-time equivalents) have increased dramatically,” said Susan Sliger, director of human services. “This is due to growth in expansion of services.”

In 2006, there were 558 employees. This year there are 760 FTEs and 900 physical employees.

Manager of Employee Relations Julie Coneset said the hospital is working hard on keeping employees happy.